In case you hadn't guessed, I'm with SJVN on this one. Sure I've bricked a few Linux and BSD installations in my time, but when it comes to production systems, it's extremely easy to stay on the straight and narrow with Linux and BSD. Upgrades can be tricky, but that's true for Windows, too. I'm taking upgrades from one release to another.

But a standard security or bug-fix update with patches to a current release? I can't remember the last time anything of the sort went wrong on the stable release of any Linux distribution or BSD release I've used. Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu -- I've never had a problem with a software update.

And while my record on major-version upgrades isn't as spotless, if you wait until after a new stable release to upgrade a Debian box and follow the instructions, I can pretty much guarantee it's going to work out fine. CentOS doesn't exactly support version upgrades (5.x to 6.x, for instance). They recommend a full reinstall. And I do believe Ubuntu is improving in terms of major-version upgrades (11.04 to 11.10, or 10.04 to 11.10, the latter of which is now possible).

Forget upgrading for a moment. How do Windows servers actually perform? With that I'm less than impressed.

I have to contend daily with a Windows IIS server that just doesn't do what a Linux server does (which in this case includes running scripting languages and applications that aren't VB Script or ASP.NET, and often not that either, and consistently serving media files to my users).

And then there's the OTHER Microsoft server I use daily (supplied by a vendor) that regularly chokes on SQL queries and seems to die for hours at a time.

If only both workloads were moved to Linux or BSD ... and yes, in both cases there are sysadmins other than myself to take care of the installations.

I can understand hating on Linux on the desktop, though I don't agree and am writing this post on a Debian Squeeze system that I upgrade all the time.

But coming out for Windows and against Linux on the server? That dog most definitely won't hunt.

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E-mail: steven (at) stevenrosenberg dot net.

Who am I

and why am I here?

My name is Steven Rosenberg. Most of what I write these days has something to do with technology. I'm not an "early adopter." I think before I leap. I've got a lot of old hardware, and I like making it work.

My main computer runs the Fedora distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system.

Right now I'm using the Xfce desktop environment. I'm OK with GNOME 3 but am very happy with Xfce at the moment.

In the past, from distant to recent, I've run OpenBSD, Ubuntu and Debian on the desktop. I also run Windows 7 rather heavily as well as a very little bit of Windows 8.

I'd like to write less about technology and more about other aspects of life and work. We'll see how that plays out.